Awakened

Lenobia looked like she wanted to speak up, but when Dragon began to sob brokenly, she kept silent and moved to his side to comfort him.

That leaves me to stand up to Neferet, Stevie Rae thought, and glanced at Kramisha, who was watching Neferet with a barely veiled what-the-fuck look. Okay, so that leaves me and Kramisha to stand up to Neferet, Stevie Rae corrected inside her head. She squared her shoulders and readied herself for the epic confrontation that was sure to come when she called bullshit on the fallen High Priestess.

At that moment a weird noise drifted into the Council Chamber from the window that had been left open to the crisp night air. It was a horrible, mournful sound, and it caused the small hairs on Stevie Rae’s arms to lift.

“What is that?” Stevie Rae said, her head turned—along with everyone else’s—to the open window.

“I never heard nothin’ like it,” Kramisha said. “And it gives me the creeps.”

“It’s an animal. And it’s in pain.” Dragon instantly pulled himself together, his expression shifted, and he was, once again, a Warrior and not a heartbroken mate. He got to his feet and crossed the Council Chamber to the window.

“A cat?” Penthasilea said, looking distressed.

“I can’t see it from here. It’s coming from the east side of campus,” Dragon said, turning from the window and heading to the door purposefully.

“Oh, Goddess! I think I know the sound.” Tragic and broken, Neferet’s voice had them all turning their attention back to her. “It’s the howling of a dog, and the only canine on this campus is Stark’s Labrador, Duchess. Has something happened to Stark?”

Stevie Rae watched Neferet press one slim hand against her throat, as if to hold back the pounding of her heart at the terrible thought that something could have happened to Stark.

Stevie Rae wanted to slap her. Neferet could have received a dang Academy Award for Best Fake Tragic Performance by a Lead Bitch. That’s it. She wasn’t going to let her get away with this crap.

But Stevie Rae didn’t get a chance to confront Neferet. The moment Dragon opened the door to the hallway a cacophony of sound flooded everyone. Fledglings were rushing toward the Council Chamber. Most of them were crying and shouting, but above all of the noise—above even the horrible howling—one sound became distinctly recognizable: that of a person keening in grief.

Within the grief, Stevie Rae recognized the voice.

“Oh, no,” she said, rushing down the hallway. “That’s Damien.”

Stevie Rae was ahead of even Dragon, and when she wrenched open the outside door of the school, she barreled into Drew Partain with such force that both of them tumbled to the ground. “Jeeze Louise, Drew! Get outta my—”

“Jack’s dead!” Drew shouted, scrambling to his feet and pulling her up with him. “Over there by the broken tree at the east wall. It’s bad. Really bad. Hurry—Damien needs you!”

Stevie Rae felt a surge of nausea as she processed what Drew was saying. And then she was swept with Drew in a tide of vampyres and fledglings as they all rushed across campus.

When Stevie Rae got to the tree she had a terrible moment of déjà vu. The blood. There was so much blood everywhere! She flashed back to the night Stark’s arrow had opened her body and drained practically all of her life’s blood out of it at this very spot.

Only this time it wasn’t her. This time it was kind, sweet Jack and he really was dead, so it was terrible times ten. For a second the scene didn’t seem to make sense to her because no one moved—no one spoke. There were no sounds except Duchess’s howling and Damien’s keening. The boy and the dog were crouched beside Jack, who lay, facedown, on the blood-soaked grass, with the point of a long sword protruding several feet from the back of his neck. It had run through him with such force that it had almost severed his head from his body.

“Oh, Goddess! What has happened here?” It was Neferet who unfroze everyone. She hurried up to Jack, bending to rest her hand gently on his body. “The fledgling is dead,” she said solemnly.

Damien looked up. Stevie Rae saw his eyes. They were filled with pain and horror and maybe, just maybe, even a shadow of madness. As he stared at Neferet she watched his already pale face blanch almost colorless, and that jolted her.

“I’m thinkin’ you should leave him alone,” Stevie Rae said, moving so that she stood between Neferet and Jack and Damien.

“I am High Priestess here. It is my place to deal with this tragedy. What’s best for Damien is for you to step aside and let adults sort all of this out,” Neferet said. Her tone was reasonable, but Stevie Rae was looking into her emerald eyes and she saw something stir there that made her skin crawl.

Stevie Rae could feel everyone watching her. She knew there was some rightness in what Neferet was saying—she hadn’t been a High Priestess long enough to know how to deal with something as horrible as what had happened tonight. Heck, she was really only a High Priestess because there weren’t any other red fledgling girls who had Changed. Did she have any right to speak up as Damien’s “High Priestess”?

Stevie Rae stood there, silent and struggling with her own insecurities. Neferet ignored her and crouched beside Damien, taking his hand and forcing him to look at her. “Damien, I know you are in shock, but you must get control of yourself and tell us how this happened to Jack.”

Damien blinked blindly at Neferet, and then Stevie Rae saw his vision clear and he focused on her. He snatched his hand from hers. Shaking his head back and forth, back and forth, he started sobbing, “No! No! No!”

That was it. Stevie Rae had had enough. She didn’t care if the whole damn universe couldn’t see through Neferet’s bullshit. She wasn’t go

“What happened? You’re asking what happened? Like it’s just a coincidence that Jack is murdered at the same time you show up back here at school?” Stevie moved back to Damien’s side, taking his hand. “You can trick-or-treat the blind-as-bats High Council. You can even talk some of these good folks into believin’ you’re still on our side, but Damien and Zoey and”—she paused when she heard two very similar gasps of horror as the Twins ran up. “—and Shaunee and Erin and Stark and I. We do not effing believe you’re a good guy. So why don’t you explain what happened here?”

Neferet shook her head, looking sad and tragically beautiful. “I feel sorry for you, Stevie Rae. You used to be such a sweet, loving fledgling. I do not know what happened to you.”

Stevie Rae felt rage rush through her. Her body trembled with the force of it. “You know better than anyone on this earth what happened to me.” She couldn’t help herself. The anger was too much. Stevie Rae started to move toward Neferet. At that moment she wanted nothing so much as to wrap her hands around the vampyre’s throat and press and press and press until she no longer breathed—was no longer a threat.

But Damien didn’t loosen his hold on her hand. That link of touch and trust between them, as well as Damien’s broken whisper, held her back. “She didn’t do it. I saw it happen and she didn’t do it.”

Stevie Rae hesitated, glancing down at Damien. “What do you mean, honey?”

“I was way over there. Just outside the field house door. Duchess wouldn’t let me jog. She kept pulling me back toward here. I finally gave in to her.” Damien’s voice was rough and he spoke in sharp bursts of words. “She made me worried. So I was looking. I saw it.” He started to sob again. “I saw Jack fall from the top of the ladder and land on the sword. There was no one around him. No one at all.”

Stevie Rae turned to Damien and pulled him into her arms. As she did so she felt two more pairs of arms enfolding them as the Twins joined their circle, holding them tightly.